Osamu Tezuka thread

Tezuka thread, for great justice.

This dude's criminally under-appreciated by modern anime and manga fans, which is really sad, not only because his work is awesome, but when I was the only Osamu Tezuka expert they could find in my country to talk on radio about Tezuka, something has gone horribly wrong. I am officially an expert in Tezuka, according to John Safran. And that's both awesome, and sad. Awesad?

Apollos Song is a masterpiece, so is MW, I liked the story of Ayako but the translation left the Osakan characters with Uncle Ruckus speak like in The Boondocks. Which was even weirder than Texan accents in anime and manga for some reason. Somehow they achieved that.

I'd say his Buddha series is a great place to start, and it's acclaimed by actual Buddhists, which Tezuka was not one himself, so that's a seal of quality right there.

Also, Tezuka's Metropolis, at least the manga since I haven't seen the movie made from it after Tezuka died, is old timey 1930s Americana meets Manga done right. Kinda neat pulpy Sci-Fi with decent dark tone.

Tezuka's Experimental Films are also a must. Many are on Youtube, so you have no excuse.

Adolf ni Tsugu is fuckin' badass. Buddha moreso, but like, seriously; Jewish-Adolf's dad's Come At Me, Bro moment was awesome. XD

I'm ashamed to say I've only read some of Black Jack. My library has full sets of his other series so I've been meaning to read them...

Unfortunately they only have 3 volumes of Black Jack, so my reading of that was cut short.

Figured I wanted to revive this thread, since Octas Inc. is preparing to make a reboot/re-imagining of Tezuka's Unico series titled "UNICO: AWAKENING".

Edited by brb1006 on May 11th 2022 at 12:09:39 PM

"The Anime Nostalgia Podcast" (a podcast dedicated to vintage anime/manga) recently did an interview with Samuel Sattin (writer of UNICO: AWAKENING) talking about the development on the Unico reboot/re-imagining and how Tezuka Productions quickly approved it.

Edited by brb1006 on May 15th 2022 at 2:08:08 PM

MW is great. I got Michio unticked for a Complete Monster unfortunately, he's near as qualifying as a character can but he had agency issues.

The comic book podcast "Blake's Buzz" just did an interview with Samuel Sattin where both discuss the development of "Unico: Awakening" and some of the film adaptations (mainly ''The Fantastic Adventures of Unico"). After hearing both interviews, Sattin sounds really passionate on re-inventing Unico. Especially since it's an American-Japanese collaboration (which Tezuka was a huge fan of).

Edited by brb1006 on May 15th 2022 at 2:07:07 PM

Just recently checked out Unico in the Island of Magic this past Tuesday night (May 17) and Unico: Black Cloud and White Feather Wednesday afternoon (May 18) since I've been on on a huge Unico binge this week as preparation for Unico: Awakening. But man, does Unico really make you think deeply (especially the climax in the 1983 film).

After checking out the other Unico animated works, I'm so proud of Samuel Sattin for becoming a writer for the new Unico manga. I can totally understand why Sattin once mentioned about Tezuka Productions asking him about "Do you understand truly Unico?" and "Do you fully understand the story?" in a few podcast interviews.

Speaking of which, here's Sattin's most recent interview from the podcast "Comics for Fun and Profit" and "Mangasplaining" (interview starts at 51:04)

The Unico: AWAKENING Kickstarter campaign has officially closed on June 2, 2022 with a total of $179,794 and 2,453 backers.

The anthology Tezucomi will be released by Magnetic Press. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/neurobellum/tezucomi-celebrating-the-works-of-osamu-tezuka

I contributed to the Kickstarter, waiting for my copies.

Tezucomi was also released in French by Delcourt and Spanish by Planeta Cómic.

A few months late, but Scholastic will publish Unico: Awakening as part of their Graphix imprint line which was announced September 20, 2023 on Forbes. The manga will run for a total of 4 (possibly 5) volumes including a Handbook. In the Netherlands, De Fontein will publish the dutch version arriving sometime in Fall 2024.

While the first volume will be released August 6, 2024, a preview edition of the manga will be sold at local and independent comic book stores as part of "Free Comic Book Day" on May 4, 2024 in North America.

Finally, Scholastic/Graphix and Tezuka Productions unveiled the finalized cover of the first volume on February 8, 2024 for the Scholastic version. Gurihiru also made a post on Twitter/X discussing how overwhelmed they felt.

Recently, Scholastic updated their Graphix page where Unico is included alongside Bone, Wings of Fire, and Dog Man complete with a dedicated page to the manga.

Edited by brb1006 on Mar 4th 2024 at 11:33:39 AM

My copies of Tezucomi have arrived. Thoughts later.

Since the announcement of Unico: Awakening, Gurihiru has been sharing WIP pages from the first volume every few months on Twitter. In their recent posts, they explained that the first volume was originally going to have a total of 172 pages but ended up with a total of 224 pages.

On a "Backers Only" update posted to the manga's official Kickstarter on January 2024. They explained that they had to delay the manga's initial Summer 2023 release due to Samuel Sattin and Gurihiru's ideas growing larger and lengthier then they originally intended. Combined with catching Scholastic's attention which caused them to make a few adjustments for the Kickstarter and Scholastic versions of the first volume. That's half the length of the entire Tezuka manga for those that own an English version in omnibus format.

Sattin also posted a picture on his Instagram that showed a glimpse of a manuscript for "The Tale of the Fangs of Athens" story line in a future volume.